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There’s a lot of hand-wringing in these parts of the interwebz about what reactionaries should do.

I have no idea. I certainly have no grand plans to change the world. I like knowing what’s going on around me and I like open discussions – i.e. ones that are not choked to death by political correctness.

However, if I were to suggest a plan, I’d say tell the truth.

His (slightly) more detailed suggestions are also commendable. The Cathedral provokes reaction by mandating fantasy over reality, and there is no doubt much that could be doneaboutthat.

There is a sub-question about all this, however, which is scarcely less insistent: What do ‘we’ really want?

More cybernetics, argues the determinedly non-reactionary Aretae. Of course, Outside in agrees. Social and technical feedback machinery is reality’s (only?) friend, but what does the Cathedral care about any of that? It’s winning a war of religion. Compulsory anti-realism is the reigning spirit of the age.

The only way to get more tight-feedback under current conditions is by splitting, in every sense. That is the overwhelming practical imperative: Flee, break up, withdraw, and evade. Pursue every path of autonomization, fissional federalism, political disintegration, secession, exodus, and concealment. Route around the Cathedral’s educational, media, and financial apparatus in each and every way possible. Prep, go Galt, go crypto-digital, expatriate, retreat into the hills, go underground, seastead, build black markets, whatever works, but get the hell out.

Truth-telling already presupposes an escape from the empire of neo-puritan dreams. ‘We’ need to throw open the exit gates, wherever we find them, so the wreck can go under without us. Reaction begins with the proposition that nothing can or should be done to save it. Quit bailing. It’s done. The sooner it sinks the better, so that something else can begin.

More than anything we can say, practical exit is the crucial signal. The only pressure that matters comes from that. To find ways out, is to let the Outside in.

30 Responses to this entry

Handle Says:

I’m fairly confident that – just as squeaky wheels get the oil – effective signals get counterattacks. If exit becomes a problem, then exit will be punished.

My contention is this – that none of us really knows what disruptive things would happen if reactionary / taboo / red-pill / anti-Blue-Orthodoxy ideas were to become widely held or even just start spreading among a new generation of elites. Moldbug likes to emphasize the egalitarian-utopian historical continuity (or at least a consistent directional trend), but my sense is that the ruling class / opinion-making elite has has a few genuine generational intellectual upheavals. The rise and fall of the Marxist variants is an example.

Reactionaries have an inherent allergy against thinking in terms of influencing “public opinion”, any sort of populist dynamic or “movements” or anything involving counting heads. We prefer to be selective. We like being anti-popular. Can’t judge merit by the herd and all that.

And yet, disruption lives. Just as Marxism has its high-water mark, so too has Feminism. The Game phenomenon on the web is an example, and it’s influence is, naturally, under-reported and thus under-estimated. I work with many young men in my profession, and the rapid, internet-as-workaround-based transformation in attitudes to be utterly resistant, mocking, and resentful of the official creed is remarkable to me. Baumeister quips that nearly all men will do anything necessary to obtain sex and not a bit more. Aaron David Miller says that Success is the true religion of the world. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that intellectual and cultural push-back when the behavioral encouragements of Orthodoxy rub against this particular aspect of reality.

Some of us like to ask the newbies “What first brought you here?” Of course, it’s always something, usually one nagging thing too much that just can’t be tolerated anymore – sex, race, crime, money, culture, something. Idealist-Utopian Delusion-shattering through harsh experience “mugged by reality” sometimes. Conservatism, Libertarianism, etc. suddenly become insufficient, unsatisfactory. Where is the answer? Where is the alternative? Where are my comrades?

They look for their peccadillo niche, but find something much deeper and broader, and their minds open to new possibilities, to think the unthinkable. Consider Jeff

This is a subject that has been on my mind a lot lately as I move from traditional libertarian to something else (reactionary, maybe?). Most of the good ideas have already been covered above me in the comments, but if there were one change I would make to our system right now it’d be to bifurcate it. There’s a line (probably somewhere around one-two std below median income) below which people are completely incapable of making decisions for themselves. If we want these people to stop being a complete drag on our civilization, they need to live with a lot less freedom (no divorce and no children out of wedlock, for starters).

What happened to Jeff? A former “Libertarian” who now thinks it preferable that a certain significant fraction of low-ability adults should have the most fundamental aspects of their lives utterly dictated by some benevolent paternalistic entity? What happened here? This is feed-back. This is the system heightening it’s own contradictions and producing pre-singularity symptoms which aggravate enough to push people out of the fold. My personal experience is that people who oppose the status quo are so frustrated by the futility of current modes of opposition, that it doesn’t take much effort at all to push them out.

I’m not saying anyone should actively try to engineer the maximization of this phenomenon. I’m saying that, in certain areas, like sexual relations, it is already starting to exist spontaneously and organically, and that it is spreading and growing successfully despite The Cathedral’s best efforts. I’m also saying that no one can really predict what’s actually possible if this phenomenon picks up the elements of the entire reactionary portfolio and achieves just enough mass to be “cool.”

That all sounds very sensible to me, and I suspect that Foseti would fully endorse it.
It still leaves open the question: what is actually being recommended (beyond acceptance of uncomfortable truths)? People want a program as well as a diagnosis, at least in rough outline.

As for the coming crack-down on exit strategies, I agree that this would be a sign they are beginning to effectively work. The assault on Bitcoin that Moldbug predicts would be a very promising indicator in this respect. If there has to be a fight, best that it is about something worthwhile: increasingly hysterical Cathedralists trying to keep their human and other economic resources locked in.

Addendum: Here’s what I mean by feedback push-back. Robert Conquest’s First Law, “Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.” Not really true anymore, and not “conservative.” But some of the most single-scope “reactionary” stuff I read is from individuals who started out as dewey-eyed dreamers and true believers in the one true faith, and ended up getting mugged by reality. There’s Education Reality and The Angry Pharmacist and a dozen other burned-out professionals, each stewing with their own little corner of the overall mess, but also, seeing the light and shining it (often humorously) for others, just like Roosh and Heartiste.

In my own mind, these are not really distinct but related things. Organizing and Systematizing all these various phenomena under one roof with a consistent and coherent “theory”, and creating a kind of Master Gateway to it all seems interesting to me.

I’m very sympathetic to this enterprise, but anticipate a number of challenging obstacles. The negative aspect (diagnosis of Cathedral dominion) is the least controversial part, but even here the integrative project you lay before us is soon cross-cut by disintegrative currents. The theory quickly becomes a typology, or systematic analysis of factions. That is why secessionist programs, in all their varieties, strike me as especially promising. It seems more realistic to enumerate all the different things people might seek to do (attempt) than to hold out hope for a unitary aspiration. Divide, experiment, and learn, rather than unite, argue, and submit.

To take this track has some interesting consequences. It means that even if the diagnosis is integrated, and neo-reactionary, the program is radically agnostic. A communist who wants to work out his ideals in a micro-society he shares with his fellows, is — practically speaking — a more effective ally than an arch-reactionary aiming to install effective government in a large state. The vision of communists starving and eating their babies is more educational for the world than any public debate within a unified society. Evolution happens amongst minuscule population fragments, not through dialectical integration. Among 10,000 micro-states, one might find an unexpected administrative solution that transforms the future of the world. It is not diversity that is the problem, but integrated diversity. Let anything be tried, as long as it is also allowed to fail (and, in failing, to extinguish itself).

In saying all this, of course, I am proposing a political or anti-political ‘god’ — EXIT, the principle of the Outside. This can hardly be considered uncontroversial, although I would like to see it established as the basic foundation of Dark Enlightenment (when conceived programmatically). Others prefer that the place of god belongs only to (the Abrahamic) God, or to charismatic sovereignty, or to the white race, or to scientific consensus, or to universal equality and non-discrimination, or to fraternal solidarity, or to the communist ‘new man’, or to post-heteronormative transpolysexualism, or to Gaia … and all of these gods, as God, would be subordination of the Outside, and thus oppression. Perhaps there is a way to say this more diplomatically …

The other day, I was at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C.. Walking around in it after reading Lure of the Void and thinking about the Cathedral’s locking the escape hatch . . . it was a very different experience than it was when I visited the place a few years back. I finally saw the underlying (and not terribly hidden) message proclaimed by the space exhibits: “Wasn’t that nice to see what was up there? Now come back down and let’s look at the pictures we brought back.” Anything that mentioned the future of space flight was decidedly focused on unmanned vehicles.

Unrelated: What role can academics play in Exit? In your mind, is working in the Cathedral incommensurable with reaction? What about institutions like Hillsdale College or Ralston College, places that take pride in their complete disconnection from the USG?

Thanks for the LotV remark — it’s a series that’s been arbitrarily suspended, incomplete (with sections on the Chinese space program and off-planet robotics in the pipeline). In fact, even The Dark Enlightenment, strictly speaking, is incomplete — I finished the digression on racial terror with part 4f, but Part 5 (on Malthusian currents) was to come next. Once I get Urban Future shifted onto a functional platform, and some other urgent tasks done, I’ll try to get some re-animation going.

As for academics that aren’t working as apparatchiks of Leviathan, of course there are some — even plenty (if STEM departments are included), journalists too! At the risk of drawing down the wrath of the true believers, I have to confess that even the George Mason libertarian squishes count as something unmistakably positive from my perspective (let alone HH Hoppe, or Walter Block, both of whom have interesting things to say about their respective positions within Cathedralizing academia).

It has to be wrong to think of either media or academia as intrinsically or comprehensively Cathedralist. They are older institutions, with dignified prior histories and (to a lesser extent) legacies, that have been primary targets of progressive take-over and Cathedral-slaving to the New England neo-puritan mega-meme.

Another reactionairy whose only question is how he can run away. The Cathedral cowers at your bravery.

Like a man who thinks he will change feminism by banging drunk chicks in bars or a dude in Southeast Asia selling wieght loss DVDs on the internet thinks he is ushering in some new way of doing business its all just such a bunch of non-scalable bullshit that doesn’t change anything. The host society produces the surplus. A few people on the edges can leach off some of the surplus while keeping out of the main. But that’s the point, it only works for a few people. And it works mainly by taking advantage of the main group of people, making things even worse.

It’s true that I’m almost entirely uninterested in “the main group of people” — I’m confident it’s perfectly reciprocal. There are plenty of people advocating variants of the revolutionary stormfront Volkspolitik option, so you can surely find what you’re looking for among them.

If you not interested why are you posting on the internet about how things suck. Certainly you could be better putting your effort into the latest internet marketing scam to grant you “independence” while the world burns.

Our goodly host NL has done a lot more to live out his theory than most in the reacto-sphere. He’s not just ‘posting on the internet about how things suck.’

And anyway, as he seems to imply, if you want to Stay And Fight instead of Exit, that’s good and well, and you shouldn’t hold ill will against those who choose the latter option because if they Re-Build Something New In The Shadows while you’re still Fighting The Good Fight, then said re-building DOES hurt the Cathedral, even if in subtle ways, and thus can only benefit the mass society you seem concerned about.

In other words: there are many tactics, and it’s pointless for reactionaries to fraction over them.

asdf Reply:March 2nd, 2013 at 7:59 pm

There is no re-build though. All of these “independence” schemes aren’t about actual independence. They are about exploiting some loophole in the system to get in on the action. Tired of getting ripped off by the system? Find a way to rip off the system. None of it actually creates anything.

fotrkd Reply:March 1st, 2013 at 5:49 pm

I think Outside in (and it’s sister store, Urban future – currently undergoing renovation, but you should maybe check it out anyway) is more of a niche retailer than a Walmart or an Amazon for the masses. The internet is quite good at doing both. That said, I’m sure it could benefit from a more substantial income stream. Apocalypse is already proving quite a profitable marketing strategy (see http://www.moneyweek.com/endofbritain for a particularly desperate example). Perhaps Outside In Platinum Memberships (payed for in Bitcoins naturally), with a complimentary red pill (or a pen – you always used to get a pen)?

Really liked this post. Although I’m still not entirely convinced with a lot of the neo-reaction I’ve been reading (especially the stuff on race), when you couch it in terms of ‘exit’, ‘pro-realism’, and combine it with the staccato and intensity of your earlier work, I’m close to being sold! ‘Voting with your feet’, as you have mentioned in the past, is probably the most praticallly consistent thing one can do.

Off topic – but ho hum.

In terms of the people you recommended me:

Theil does seems an interestering character. I read the ‘No tax, No death’ article in the New Yorker, not sure if he was being painted in a favourable light, however.

This Seasteading business is great stuff. Gave a Libertarian friend of mine a mind boner, for sure. you’re right about Patri, he does seem like he has stepped off an ‘another time’ ship. So yes, hopefully soon I’ll be clued up enough to be able to contribute to some of these exchanges.

No one agrees with anyone else about anything in this neck of the woods, so you can feel right at home …
On the ‘race stuff’ read this, then let me know whether you still think the mandatory human uniformity doctrine is really credible.

I never thought the human uniformity doctrine was credible – but reading through some of these blogs – in their vehement tones and implications – more is going on than charting innate differences.

But don’t get me wrong, I know what it’s like expressing non-PC thoughts. I remember being at Warwick, in a sociology class. I said that seeing a group of black men heading towards me at night would arouse my spidey senses more than whites. I said there was something innate about that. Instinctive. Everyone went white (pun semi-intended). The only reason it wasn’t held against me was because I presented it in a fairly sheepish, arbitary manner; and maybe because everyone knew I wasn’t from a sociological background.

I notice plenty of PC wars going on in the mainstream. Stuff regarding the dominance of blacks in sprinting; or how, in my favourite sport (Mixed Martial Arts) are particularly met with confused stares. A commentator, Joe Rogan, keeps apologising for using ‘athletic and explosive’ to describe black fighters. But they ARE. It just is. The thought process boggles:

1) Black people are insanely good at A
2) Meaning they are better at other races at A
3) Therefore…. ugh… where does it lead! Differences, everywhere!
4) Let’s forget about it. Watch them run.

@SDL Reply:
March 21st, 2013 at 12:40 pm

“The Reacto-sphere’s indelicate (and sometimes jaundiced) tone about race and gender results purely from the fact that we aren’t allowed to talk about it anywhere else unless we’re true-believing Blank Slatists. To be anything less is to be an odd duck, at best, or a pariah, at worst. I can almost guarantee that the HBD crowd–most of them, anyway–would take a more careful tone if they were allowed to discuss these things in public, non-anonymous venues without being given the Linda Gottfredson treatment (AKA the Larry Summers treatment).”

Is anti-political correctness really the sum of it? I’l have to read around more. I was surrounded by pure blank slatists at Warwick. I was never completely convinced. Race and Gender being total social constructs didn’t sit well with me. It has to be some mixture between genetic make up and environment, though. You can’t ignore one or the other. It doesn’t help that I remain deeply suspicious of EP and evolutionary biologys capacity to explain anthropological/sociological dilemmas. For all the talk of Catherdral talk around these parts, I believe that there is politically motivated ideology at the heart of EP/EB claims of this sort. I’ll have to look at HBD. A friend of mine said to me it is dressed up eugenics. That concerns me.

In saying all this, you’re already accepting HBD, it’s just that you’re not being a jerk about it. ‘Eugenics’, similarly, has a range of meanings. Once it ceases to be a terror word , it’s possible to think about them. Steve Hsu’s project (with BGI) is the most topical example.

Mark Warburton Reply:March 21st, 2013 at 11:31 pm

I’ll have a look at Hsu’s project. I think the Warwick example was probably not worth mentioning. I wasn’t thinking at the time (even of that time or the time I posted it!) – and, besides, you only have to switch on some terrible music channel to engrain that vision of hooded black men terrorising you and drilling white wifey. I guess physical differences (athleticism) are easy to concede. Intelligence, anti-social behaviour etc. are a lot more complex. Not just in proving, if proved the resultant explosion of questions on policy/history/race that would be blown wide open. I guess y’all know this already!

admin Reply:March 22nd, 2013 at 12:23 am

It’s impossible to “prove” something, if its contrary is an article of religious faith.

SDL Reply:March 21st, 2013 at 12:40 pm

The Reacto-sphere’s indelicate (and sometimes jaundiced) tone about race and gender results purely from the fact that we aren’t allowed to talk about it anywhere else unless we’re true-believing Blank Slatists. To be anything less is to be an odd duck, at best, or a pariah, at worst. I can almost guarantee that the HBD crowd–most of them, anyway–would take a more careful tone if they were allowed to discuss these things in public, non-anonymous venues without being given the Linda Gottfredson treatment (AKA the Larry Summers treatment).

No. It might be the beginning. For me, it certainly was. (I was a True Believer Leftist for most of my teens and early twenties; studying linguistics led me to Steve Pinker . . . . all downhill from there.) But anti-PC is nowhere near the sum of it. It’s the tip of the iceberg. It’s a doorway. (Some people get stuck there, of course.) The PC police are the pawns, I suppose. Annoying, yes, but lined up in front of some real power.

It has to be some mixture between genetic make up and environment, though.

No one–not even hard hereditarians like the duo at West Hunter–would disagree. But even a pure 50/50 split would have serious policy implications. And ‘environmental pressures’ on human traits are by and large exerted in the early years of life, which, in the popular imagination, may as well be genetic pressure.

It doesn’t help that I remain deeply suspicious of EP and evolutionary biologys capacity to explain anthropological/sociological dilemmas. . .I believe that there is politically motivated ideology at the heart of EP/EB claims of this sort . . . A friend of mine said to me it is dressed up eugenics.

I’d say you should be more concerned with whether or not something is true than with whether or not something is politically motivated. (Darwin had eugenic sympathies; T.H. Huxley was entirely political about evolution; are you going to be suspicious about evolution, then? You seem more reasonable than that.)

One of the reasons I’m persuaded by HBD is that, in the span of just a few decades, it has been championed by leftists, rightists, and mild-mannered working class fellows like Charles Murray. It gets rejected because it’s scary, not because it has been shown to be false.

Intelligence, anti-social behaviour etc. are a lot more complex. Not just in proving, if proved the resultant explosion of questions on policy/history/race that would be blown wide open.

Egalitarian democracy for homo sapiens? Is it like asking a terrier to pull a sled? Can’t we at least ask the question? The fact that we can’t is more than a little suggestive . . .

Look, answer this question for yourself. A little thought experiment, a pure hypothetical:

In the news the other day, I saw that astronomers had confirmed the existence of a rogue planet, basically an overgrown comet. Its orbit isn’t a threat, but let’s say it was. Let’s say the astronomers also discovered that we have exactly two years before the rogue planet collides with Earth. Game over. Every nation on Earth has shifted all its energy into finding a way to avoid the collision. Which nation, Mark, do you think will save the day?

A national lab in Haiti staffed by Haitians.
A national lab in Israel staffed by Ashekanzi Jews.
A national lab in Ghana staffed by West Africans and a few Somalis.
A national lab in Ecuador staffed by mestizos and Amerinds.
A national lab in Japan staffed by Japanese and a few Koreans.
A national lab in India staffed by high-caste Indians.
A national lab in America staffed by Northern Europeans and various East Asians.

Rank them, according to most and least likely to save Earth and deflect the oncoming rogue planet through pure scientific and technological prowess and intelligence.

Then tell me you’re not just a little wary of the fellow who comes along and picks Option Haiti–and through international pressure de-funds Option America and Option Japan –because social justice dictates that we give preference to those without privilege.